How old is the Pashto Language?

[بصير]

Actually Herodotos and Rigveda mentions the Paktyan tribes living west of the Indus river at about 1100 BC. There are Chinese sources that Talks about the Awghans Tribes living West of the Indus at about 600 AD. The Ancient Persians talk about its untameable tribes on its Eastern frontier.

Did Pashto change over time. Well if you look at liguistics of Pashto people, it varies from place to place, but the ones that live in isolated valleys, most likely they have kept the original or maybe the oldest version of Pashto.

So its pretty old.

The problem with the Pactyan theory is that it is a surmise based on a precarious phonetic similarity of words, now mere phonetic similarity does not necessarily entail they are cognates and unless you can ascertain the semantic relationship between the two, this is quite a superficial theory (they may be what we call “false cognates” in Linguistics). Herodotus also mentioned that the Pactyans resembled the neighbouring Bactrians in their way of life.

There is also evidence that the Ashvakans (Kambojas) mentioned in ancient Sanskrit literature spoke Avestan (Ancient Sanskrit grammarian Yaskabriefly contrasts their language with Sanskrit which according to Linguist Michael Witzel seems like a form of ancient Avestan).

Pashto may have had a pre-form (i.e. a predecessor language from which it mainly evolved into what it is) other than the proto language of its language family, if this pre-form was an ancient form of Avestan or Bactrian then a form of Pashto atleast resembling its current form likely existed between 2000-3000 years ago.

Although you will abundant Avestan/Sanskrit and other roots in Pashto, it does apparently have a lot of morphemes special to the language itself, perhaps Pashto does not have a known predecessor and developed in the way Sanskrit or Avestan supposedly did: directly from Proto Indo Iranian in which case it may be around 4000 years old.

However, it is definitely not 5000+ years old, the 3rd Millenium BC was the era of the Proto-Indo Iranians, i.e., the era of the ancestor language of the entire Indo-Iranian language family (Proto Indo Iranian language) and not even Sanskrit or Avestan had developed then.

[Abdul Basit]

salam

i go to pashto class and i am 15
my teacher said that a great suhabi who saw prophet Mohammed spoked pashto
and also he said, one pashto poem was made in about 500 years ago.




Guys,we should support pashto and make people to speak pashto and should never forget pashto.

[Shayesta]

I am not sure how true this is, but it was last year or so when I met my friend's Iranian classmate. Me and my friend were speaking in Pukhto and her Iranian classmate was trying to understand what we were saying, and all of a sudden she said this Pukhto of yours is nowhere close to the 'original' Pukhto she has heard of in history books. I got surprised by her statement and asked her how she knows about Pukhto? She told me that Pukhto is actually older than Dari/Farsi and even Iranian regions were speaking Pukhto until it slowly got replaced by Dari/Farsi, and she even claimed that many of today's Dari/Farsi words are borrowed from 'ancient' Pukhto, not the other way round. She had a book in Farsi which went into details about history of Pukhto and also Pukhto dialects that were spoken in Iranian regions, which she told me she would show me, but I haven't seen her for months now to ask her about it.

If that's true then I guess in history and language we are closer to Iranians than we might think, and this also straight-away kills the theories of all Pukhtoons originating from Soleiman Mountains.

[طالب]

one pashto poem was made in about 500 years ago.

This is true. According to Barbara Robson and Habibullah Tegey in "The Iranian languages" the earliest known example of written Pashto is a book of religious verses from the end of the sixteenth century. It was written by Bayazid Ansari, aka Pir Roshan. The earliest Pashto literature on the other hand was written by the poet Khushal Khan Khattak who lived from 1613-1689. He adapted the Persian alphabet and thus laid the foundation for the modern Pashto writing system.

[Pashtunistan]

Pashto:

Pashto is an (Indo European)Language History Of 8000 years old.Pashtuns Are The Only Largest Tribe That Has Survived decades Of Wars Since Bactria,Aryana,Persia,Greek And Roman Kingdoms And We Will Keep It That Way Our Blood Among Our Own Pashtuns Our Aryan Blood.

[کیش]

Pashto:

Pashto is an (Indo European)Language History Of 8000 years old.Pashtuns Are The Only Largest Tribe That Has Survived decades Of Wars Since Bactria,Aryana,Persia,Greek And Roman Kingdoms And We Will Keep It That Way Our Blood Among Our Own Pashtuns Our Aryan Blood.

I didn't know Afghan land was in Rome as well.

"our Aryan blood"

You just said Pashtuns survived wars since Bactria; Aryana; Persia, Greek; and Roman Kingdoms, but why is only "Aryan blood"? Why not Roman Blood as well.

[retro]

The problem with the Pactyan theory is that it is a surmise based on a precarious phonetic similarity of words, now mere phonetic similarity does not necessarily entail they are cognates and unless you can ascertain the semantic relationship between the two, this is quite a superficial theory (they may be what we call “false cognates” in Linguistics). Herodotus also mentioned that the Pactyans resembled the neighbouring Bactrians in their way of life.

There is also evidence that the Ashvakans (Kambojas) mentioned in ancient Sanskrit literature spoke Avestan (Ancient Sanskrit grammarian Yaskabriefly contrasts their language with Sanskrit which according to Linguist Michael Witzel seems like a form of ancient Avestan).

Pashto may have had a pre-form (i.e. a predecessor language from which it mainly evolved into what it is) other than the proto language of its language family, if this pre-form was an ancient form of Avestan or Bactrian then a form of Pashto atleast resembling its current form likely existed between 2000-3000 years ago.

Although you will abundant Avestan/Sanskrit and other roots in Pashto, it does apparently have a lot of morphemes special to the language itself, perhaps Pashto does not have a known predecessor and developed in the way Sanskrit or Avestan supposedly did: directly from Proto Indo Iranian in which case it may be around 4000 years old.

However, it is definitely not 5000+ years old, the 3rd Millenium BC was the era of the Proto-Indo Iranians, i.e., the era of the ancestor language of the entire Indo-Iranian language family (Proto Indo Iranian language) and not even Sanskrit or Avestan had developed then.

The Indo-European languages are around 8,500 years old and are believed to of have first emerged in Black Sea region. The Anatolian branches being the oldest known todate.

Proto-Pashto is likely very late bronze age or early Iron age and the people in the region, who I'd worry about are the Tocharians. As they where seemingly a settled peoples, spoke a Centum Indo-European language and where living in the Tarim Basin region (north east of Tajikstan) from 1800 BCE until the 9th century CE. Which is very early and the Tocharian mummies are rather intriguing, as they are completely out of place.

However Western Eurasian/North Eastern Eurasian interaction is far more ancient, than most people think. As even Mongols and Siberians have Western Eurasian ancestry; let alone Turkic peoples who are clearly a intermediary group.

Ethnically the ancient Greeks, Anatolians, Persians and Northern Mesopotamian peoples where all fairly interrelated. However it's unlikely that the proto-Indo-Iranics where originally from the Near East or "ethnic Persians".

As Indo-European Linguists, infer there must have been a period in time when Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian speakers lived as close neighbours, because some Iranian words have been loaned to Balto-Slavic languages and even Ugrian. So it's likely that the Proto-Indo-Iranics where original some kind of Euroasatics peoples from the Urals.

I'd say that it's likely that most Iranic people in Central Asia are a mix of nomadic Iranics i.e. Indo-Scythians; Tocharians, Near Eastern silk road types and Indics.

[ScimitarXEdge]

Can you show us any evidence of Proto Pashto retro?

[retro]

Can you show us any evidence of Proto Pashto retro?

I not a Linguist, however I suspect that if proto-Pashto where to be reconstructed. Then it would assume a more arcane Indo-Iranic form and be similar to Sanskrit. Since Sanskrit is something of a relic that has been subject to far less innovation, than most other Indo-European languages.

The Anatolian branch of Indo-European is older than the Indo-Iranic branch and people like the Hittites reported migrated to Anatolian from the region north of the Black Sea (Ukraine). So it's likely that the proto-Indo-European where some kind of Western Asians/Western Eurasian peoples. However their exact origins have alluded researchers for generations now.

Nevetheless what we do know is that the Black and Caspian Sea, Urals and Western Central Asia are all important, ancient Indo-European centres.

[بصير]

I not a Linguist, however I suspect that if proto-Pashto where to be reconstructed. Then it would assume a more arcane Indo-Iranic form and be similar to Sanskrit. Since Sanskrit is something of a relic that has been subject to far less innovation, than most other Indo-European languages.

The Anatolian branch of Indo-European is older than the Indo-Iranic branch and people like the Hittites reported migrated to Anatolian from the region north of the Black Sea (Ukraine). So it's likely that the proto-Indo-European where some kind of Western Asians/Western Eurasian peoples. However their exact origins have alluded researchers for generations now.

Nevetheless what we do know is that the Black and Caspian Sea, Urals and Western Central Asia are all important, ancient Indo-European centres.

You can reconstruct an approximate form of a proto language of a language family or subgroup, this works by utilizing comparative linguistics and taking the most common linguistic features etc and generalizing common lexical roots; you can’t, however, construct a proto language of a single language by simply analyzing it but you can determine if some earlier form of that language was the proto form if you know the earlier form, however what is known about the known Eastern Iranic languages does not let us conclude that the affinity is inasmuch as one can say one of those was the ancestor of Pashto. Its very difficult to analyze Pashto within a historical frame as there is no historical account of it prior to a few centuries ago so we no absolutely nothing about its early form and the only thing we can do is analyze its linguistic features and this sadly has turned out rather futile if the task is to delineate its precise historical development.

Morgenstierne contends that distinctly Indic (i.e. Sanskrit) features of Pashto seem borrowed rather than primordial, this is because those features are almost entirely lexical and lexical influence is the most superficial of all linguistic influence but the more -difficult to influence- features of Pashto (e.g. syntax) are not distinctly Indic so it appears that Pashto did not branch out of the Indo-Iranian tree with the Indo side. We can infer thus that either the proto Pashto was some form of some Eastern Iranic language or that it directly evolved from proto Indo Iranian.

[graveyardofempires]

the first Pashtun poet was Amir Kror Suri


who live some 1200 years ago.

here is some info on him.
Amir Kror Suri - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[ScimitarXEdge]

I not a Linguist, however I suspect that if proto-Pashto where to be reconstructed. Then it would assume a more arcane Indo-Iranic form and be similar to Sanskrit. Since Sanskrit is something of a relic that has been subject to far less innovation, than most other Indo-European languages.

The Anatolian branch of Indo-European is older than the Indo-Iranic branch and people like the Hittites reported migrated to Anatolian from the region north of the Black Sea (Ukraine). So it's likely that the proto-Indo-European where some kind of Western Asians/Western Eurasian peoples. However their exact origins have alluded researchers for generations now.

Nevetheless what we do know is that the Black and Caspian Sea, Urals and Western Central Asia are all important, ancient Indo-European centres.

The same way you describe "Proto Pashto" could be used to describe any Eastern Iranian language, it would hardly be academically valid to refer to it as "Proto Pashto"

[ScimitarXEdge]

According to some Pashtun historians, Amir Kror Sori was the son of a man named Amir Polad Suri who was the governor of Ghor.[2] Allegedly, he lived in the time of Abu Muslim Khorasani[2] and became the first poet of Pashto language.[3][4][5][6] None of this, however, is confirmed or supported by other historians.

when myth becomes deemed history, there's a problem

[khushal]

I am not sure how true this is, but it was last year or so when I met my friend's Iranian classmate. Me and my friend were speaking in Pukhto and her Iranian classmate was trying to understand what we were saying, and all of a sudden she said this Pukhto of yours is nowhere close to the 'original' Pukhto she has heard of in history books. I got surprised by her statement and asked her how she knows about Pukhto? She told me that Pukhto is actually older than Dari/Farsi and even Iranian regions were speaking Pukhto until it slowly got replaced by Dari/Farsi, and she even claimed that many of today's Dari/Farsi words are borrowed from 'ancient' Pukhto, not the other way round. She had a book in Farsi which went into details about history of Pukhto and also Pukhto dialects that were spoken in Iranian regions, which she told me she would show me, but I haven't seen her for months now to ask her about it.

If that's true then I guess in history and language we are closer to Iranians than we might think, and this also straight-away kills the theories of all Pukhtoons originating from Soleiman Mountains.

Yes, my Iranian friend tell me that in Iran, they are taught that Pashto pre dates Farsi.

[afgpower]

pashto is 1000000000000000000000000000 years old